French researchers have found that people are abandoning P2P networks as a …

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France's toughest-in-the-world Internet disconnection law has yet to start cutting off P2P pirates, but the "Hadopi" law has been on the books long enough to see how its provisions are altering behavior. According to a team of French researchers, online copyright infringement is down on P2P networks—but it's up in areas that the law doesn't cover, such as online streaming and one-click download services like Rapidshare.

In fact, since the law was passed, total infringing behavior has actually increased by three percent.

Whack that mole

Researchers affiliated with the University of Rennes in France's Brittany region have just released a paper (French PDF) based on 2,000 phone surveys with Brittany residents. The survey found that 15 percent of P2P users have already stopped using such networks, even though Hadopi has yet to start sending out its warning letters and disconnection notices.

Good news for rightsholders? Perhaps, as these numbers will certainly skyrocket once the actual penalties are in place. But, in a sign of how the situation is likely to develop later this year, the researchers found that two-thirds of those former P2P users simply migrated to illegal streaming sites and HTTP-based download services.

Data source: M@rsouin; CREM; Universite de Rennes 1

In other words, Hadopi is the first step in a game of Whack-a-Mole; even as it beats down P2P use, most users transition to similarly illicit services that the "graduated response" regime doesn't touch. The one bit of good news here for rightsholders is that such services are more centralized than P2P networks, and pressure can be more easily brought to bear on a company like Rapidshare than on a distributed network of users.

The increase in non-Hadopi infringement has been larger than the declines in P2P use, suggesting a more general migration to streaming and download sites. This is no doubt because it's easier to find a rogue video site out of China that features one-click streaming of movies and TV shows to the browser than it is to install a P2P client, learn to use it, and then wait for content to arrive.

(Some) pirates are buyers

While this might sound depressing to Hadopi's backers, the study also has some surprising news about pirates: many of them buy. Half of the people who said they purchase digital music or video online also said they pirated some material.

Twenty-seven percent of all digital media buyers are "Hadopi pirates" (ie, P2P users), while the other 23 percent rely on streaming and downloads. As the researchers note, this means that banning P2P pirates from the 'Net could "eliminate 27 percent of all Internet buyers of music and video."

The survey also finds that 70 percent of all Internet users surveyed don't engage in any type of online infringement. Far more users hit legal video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion (48 percent), or go to legal streaming music sites like Deezer (43 percent), or legal download sites like iTunes (22 percent) than engage in any infringing activities.

The most popular single infringing activity is illicit Web streaming sites (20 percent), followed by P2P use (14 percent).

Data source: M@rsouin; CREM; Universite de Rennes 1

The researchers admit that this is only a preliminary assessment, as the law isn't even being enforced, but they do think there are lessons for legislators.

"This study casts light on the limits of Hadopi, which equates piracy with a protocol (P2P) and reduces piracy only among users of this protocol. Establishing an administrative authority that targets P2P networks largely seems to have the effect of exchanging piracy techniques for another set that circumvent Hadopi's provisions."